


Rampart

by Bad_Faery



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-01
Updated: 2018-11-01
Packaged: 2019-08-14 10:00:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16490444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bad_Faery/pseuds/Bad_Faery
Summary: It's better that the Flyers don't know what Gritty does in the dark of Halloween night.





	Rampart

The humans had no idea what lurked beneath them.

For them, this was a time of year for fun.  They wore silly costumes and laughed and played pranks on each other.  They pretended to be monsters, but those were just games.  They played at being scared, but they knew nothing of real horrors.   Their minds couldn’t begin to comprehend the things that lived on the other side of the boundary that lay deep in the bowels of the city beneath the Wells Fargo Center, the boundary that separated the human world of hockey and hot dogs from the other side where the other things were.  

It was a boundary that grew very thin this time of year.

For decades, Gritty had watched the humans play their games, but this year was different.  This year, they’d wanted Gritty to play too.  They’d taken away his jersey— the very special jersey they’d given to him and said he could keep forever and ever— and given him a silly costume of plastic fish curtains and bubbles so he could be part of their fun.

Gritty missed his special jersey, but he liked the silly costume.  It made his humans happy, and he liked it when they were happy.  The little humans liked to play with the bubbles he made, and the big humans played with them too, even though they only played when they didn’t think anyone was watching.  His very special jersey was safe in his nest, waiting for him, and the humans gave him lots of brightly colored things to eat that tasted sweet inside their slippery paper shells.  The humans took the shells off first, but Gritty liked the fluttery feeling against his tongue.  The orange ones and the black ones were the best, of course.  Orange and black was _always_ best.

“You sure you don’t want to come to the party?” Claude asked.  The hockey game was over, and most of the humans had already left the building.  Only his Flyers were left, and soon they would go too, leaving Gritty alone.

It was better that way.

Even though Gritty couldn’t make his mouth shape human words, Claude always understood him anyway.  Claude was his extra special very best friend.

“You don’t really want to hang out here all by yourself on Halloween, do you?  Why don’t we call Phang or the Phanatic for a sleepover?  You’d like that.  No?  Okay, buddy.  Have it your way.”  Even though Claude didn’t understand, he didn’t argue.  That was one of the reasons that he was Gritty’s extra special very best friend.

When Claude held his fist out, Gritty bumped it happily, his paw squeaking.  It would be nice if his Flyers stayed to keep him company, but it was better that they were leaving.  It was too dangerous for them to be here tonight.  Humans were so very fragile.  Gritty had broken a few before he learned how to be careful.  

“Try not to get into too much trouble,” Claude advised before he finished packing up his gear.  

One by one, his Flyers left until Gritty was alone in the darkened building.  Silently, he padded back to the nest that looked so different now.  The humans had made the walls smooth and nice instead of the dirt he’d dug out himself and shored up with chunks of wood and brick.  Now, he had lights and water and a machine that blew hot and cold air so it was always just the right temperature.  He even had a little machine that made hot dogs.

Best of all, the walls were lined with his most special things— the little treasures he’d collected from the locker room after games before his Flyers realized he was watching them and the new treasures that they’d given to him themselves.  Gritty had hockey pucks and shirts that they’d signed just for him and pictures of him with all of his friends.

Gritty loved his friends so very much.  Nothing was allowed to hurt them.

With careful paws, he removed his silly costume and replaced it with his hockey pants and the very special jersey with his name on it.  His Flyers didn’t usually let him play hockey with them, but Gritty had a jersey with his name on it just like he was part of the team.

After a moment’s consideration, he slipped his lucky hockey puck— the one that Claude had signed just for him— into his pocket.  Tonight, he might well need luck.  His T-shirt cannon, he left where it was.  The things he would face tonight wouldn’t be deterred by such an insignificant weapon.

As prepared as he could be, Gritty left his nest and moved deeper into the depths of the Wells Fargo Center, following paths that even his Flyers didn’t know were there.  Down and down and down he went until he reached a place where no human had ever set foot, the place where the boundary was.  There, he waited.

On the other side of the boundary, Gritty could see shadows, elongated things that stretched and bent in ways that no body should.  All year, they flung themselves against the boundary, attracted to the light and warmth of the human world but unable to reach it.  Tonight, however, the boundary was thin.

Not everything that came from the other side was bad.  Some of the creatures were happy just to be part of the human world.  They found things in the new world that they could love— for instance, hockey— and made a life for themselves.

Unfortunately, it was the rare eldritch creature that developed a passion for hockey or for baseball.  Most were mindless horrors, oblivious to anything but their own eternal, insatiable hunger.  They would devour everything in their path until there was nothing left, and then they would turn on each other.

Gritty would not allow that.  No harm would befall his humans as long as he was there to stop it.

Aware that not far away the Phanatic was facing his own battle beneath Citizens Bank Park, Gritty cracked his neck and allowed the fangs and claws he usually kept neatly tucked away to emerge.  He would need them tonight.

His Flyers had the very best goalies in the whole entire world, but tonight, Gritty was going to put them all to shame.  Nothing would get past him— _nothing_.

As the first squirming tentacle breached the boundary, Gritty grinned wildly and bellowed his warning, his challenge.

“ _It me!_ ”

Let them come.  They wouldn’t get far.


End file.
